Some people...

The people in Suriname deserve to be written about in a separate post. They are just awesome. When we go out with Aga, they always smile, say 'hi', wave or stop for a little chat. This is so nice and friendly.

"Hello baby" - and he didn't mean ME :)

A few days ago I realized that I know more people - neighbours, shop assistants etc. - in Paramaribo than in Cuijk, where I have lived for over a year! What does it say? Well, I think I don't have to comment it...

For example, I go for a walk with Aga everyday - or Bob - and I meet more less the same people, they wave, so I stop, talk to them, they usually have children around. They talk to Aga who is delighted when people want to listen to her stories. I talk to them - like this girl with a month old baby in her arms - so cute! With lots of jewellery on. The baby. Earrings, bracelets, necklace... all golden. Weird, but I guess culturally conditioned. The baby girl had a blue mark on her forehead which looked like the Indian tilaka - I asked if she was Indian, but the mummy claimed that her ancestors were from India, but she doesn't know about them and she is Surinamese. I realized that I have to be very careful here when I ask about where people are from...

People look very interesting, so many nations, so many languages, so many cultures. Amazing. And they all live in peace. The population is slightly less than half a million, in a country that is 4 times bigger that 15-milion Netherlands. According to the website:

Ethnic groups: Hindustani (also known locally as "East Indians"; their ancestors emigrated from northern India in the latter part of the 19th century) 37% Creole (mixed white and black) 31% Javanese 15.3% Maroons (their African ancestors were brought to the country in the 17th and 18th centuries as slaves and escaped to the interior) 10.3% Amerindian 2.6% Chinese 1.7% white 1% other 1.1%

Religions: Hindu 27.4% Muslim 19.6% Roman Catholic 22.8% Protestant 25.2% (predominantly Moravian) indigenous beliefs 5%

Languages: Dutch (official) English (widely spoken) Sranan Tongo (Surinamese sometimes called Taki-Taki is native language of Creoles and much of the younger population and is lingua franca among others) Hindustani (a dialect of Hindi) Javanese.

So, as you can see there are pretty equal proportions between 4 religions... It is possible!

Some people, as everywhere, have pets. It is quite common to have a pet bird and hang its cage on a street post or in a garden...

or sometimes to take it for a walk. Seriously! :)

I'm not sure if the guy liked the fact that I took a photo of him...

...but this guy totally loved it, as it was HIM who asked me to take a photo 'of him too' :D So I did.

There are also the dearest and nicest people - the ones who we meet almost every day. But you can read about them here: niutatek.blogspot.com (you can email me for the invitation if curious).

Chinese shops revisited

OK, so I posted some random things about the Chinese shops in Paramaribo, but a few days later I discovered totally different image of them. We stumbled on a shop, with a red carpet in front of the door (seriously!), so we went in. And WOW!!! Vegetables! A few fridges filled with vegetables and fruit presented to our eyes. What a view! :D

We were extremely happy to see them, it is very difficult to get any decent vegetables here, and for vegetarians it's a double tragedy. The shop was hugs, nice and tidy, the shop assistant was young, pretty and wore big, dark, I guess fashionable sunglasses. Yes, IN the shop. But she was smiling and moving to the rhythm of the Chinese music we could hear from the speakers. So, we bought our vegetables and wanted to buy some more stuff, but we couldn't! No labels in any Latin spelt language, not even Cyrillic or Greek, which I would manage to read. All in Chinese ideographs and the packagings were not see-through! But they looked pretty decent and the nicely organized on the shelves goods were quite expensive.

Another view at the shop

And another. And look at the decorations!

This just drew my attention. I will leave the comment to you.

So, we left the shop and walked farther, hoping to see some more nice shops. And we found some. Not as gourmet as the previous one, but decent. I walked through all the aisles, took some pictures a bit shyly, because everybody was staring at us. I went to the back of the shop to see which category of Chinese shops this one belongs to. I thing the second, which means the nice one. Pretty tidy there, a lot of nice stuff.

Sorry for the poor quality, but maybe you can see the ping-pong balls ;) How appropriate.

The back of the shop. There is a difference with the one in the previous post, isn't it?

Also poor q. But how nicely it's organized!

A cute, lucky girl got a 'Barbie' doll, from that huge pile of 'Barbie' dolls.

Isn't the name of the brand funny?? :D

...and the cherry on the cake ;)) A (poor) version or Hello Kitty or other Miffy/Nijntje

We went on... passed (only) the shop, there were guards by the door. Who knows, maybe the D&G label was original?? Just the label, of course... But the shop looked impressive.

And the display guys... mmmm... like from the Jillz (disgusting apple cider) commercial which makes me giggle each time I see it (here) - the men there are... terrible! I'm not buying it! :P

And one more thing came to my mind, from a shop that I didn't comment on here, or there, but I went there recently and spotted this - just by the door, what a nice display of coffee/creamer/sugar surrounded by those amazing ('amazing') waterfall yyy.... I don't know how to call them. Things.

And another cherry on a cake - just read the text on the packaging of those fridge magnets I bought for Aga. I read it a few times and I guess I have not enough 'brain cell' in my brain to comprehend it. I dedicate the text to Beata and Neda.

That would be it. I wrote it to counterbalance the crappy Chinese shops. I hope it worked.

Happy Valentine's Day :D

As we don't really celebrate the holiday, I didn't post anything on facebook nor on either of my blogs. But, I just found something sweet and also I forgot, I wanted to post something sweet and funny ;)

So, the first thing is a satellite picture from Google - I was planning a trip and I just found it - it's not only Paradise, but also a land of love... We actually want to go there, I wonder how it looks for real.

...and the other thing is a Valentine Day gift I received from my Switi Bop - it speaks for itself - maybe you remember it from a previous post :)

...and a bonus, since we're talking about love (no, I do not have a dirty mind, but I just couldn't help putting it here :D - I told you, it's too hot here, my brain is melting :D)

Google Maps are awesome!!!

:)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

The Goslar ship wreck

This is a short post scriptum to the post about Paramaribo, post post scriptum I guess :D I put just one picture of the Waterkant - the Suriname River bank, but there are some more as you can imagine and, what's more interesting, there is a small story about it.

It is always shocking to see such an abuse of our planet, but in the middle of a nice river bank, in the city centre of a capital city it's kind of 100 times more terrifying.

If you have a good eye or a lens you can notice that there is a sunk ship in the middle of the river. It was a German merchant ship called Goslarand was sunk by Germans during the WWII - here is a short story about it. It has never been taken out of the water, so it's still there, not very visible from the land though, so I made a compilation of google map shots ;)

And of course I have my own version of the story ;)

The view of the other side and the bridge - the sunken ship is right behind the rightmost leaf :)

The ship is still on the right, you could see the lump on the water at the end of the bridge ;)

...and here it is ;) 12 x optical zoom :)

Just one more thing which actually made me write this post (I am not a history fan, I must shamefully admit) is the fact that I have been to Goslar and I loved it!! It's an old town in Germany (Lower Saxony) with beautiful architecture and a really picturesque view if you walk up the road leading you towards the highway from Amsterdam (to Poznań), which me and two other girls went (hitch-hiking) to visit. ;) Ha!

Have a look - (taken from pixdaus.com):

Chinese shops in Par'bo

'Chinese shops' are in the title of the post, but this story is about only one of them. There could be a many stories about more of them, because they are all the same and somehow completely different. I could write a book about them! Now, just a short photo essay.

Most (all?) of the shops/markets here are Chinese family businesses. They are big and small, cleaner or dirtier, mostly dirtier. What drew my attention the most, was not the cheap, plastic crap they sell or expired food, or even the mess on/around the shelves, they were the shop assistants. In the shop we went today (for the first time) we met this family, two young people and their baby, spending its time in the shop. They looked so sad, so unhappy. The woman didn't have any facial expression, no emotions at all, no smile, no word for a customer...

And such a situation took place earlier too, in a different shop. There is one lady though, Chinese too, who even recognizes us on the street and waves ;) So I am not entirely sure what's the rule here, but something is telling me that the woman is a nice exception...

The shop we visited today - you can see the baby cot with a 1,5 year boy in it having a bottle...

The back of the shop

Blurry, but you can see the cardboard boxes on the shelves and newspapers underneath the goods

More boxes and plastic bags

And the shop assistant, she didn't even look at us...

Well, I don't quite know how to sum this up. It was just an observation. You can scroll up and look again at the beautiful flowers. Well, the Chinese woman is pretty beautiful too ;) You pick ;)

Flowers of Rainville

As you could see earlier, there are many nice plants around the houses here. Some of them are surprisingly weird :) and beautiful! See for yourself and mind that the pics were taken only during a short walk in a residential neighbourhood, I wonder what kind of plant we could see in the jungle?

This was a tree with some lime green stuff hanging from a few branches

On a small bush

A flower by the spiky green ball below

The bush was all covered with those flowers, beautiful, they were huge!

This was attached to a palm tree, in front of someone's balcony

I so wish I could go to the jungle!! Hm... maybe I will ;)

Paramaribo - a walk around the city centre

I decided to publish some of the posts from my private blog here, just general stuff, nothing personal. If you want to read some more - go to the other blog. :)

It's soooo hot! I am not sure how long I will be able to put up with it... It reminds me - once I got a few week scholarship - a language course in Serbia, it was sooo hot there that I couldn't stand it and I went back home after two weeks. I couldn't do anything there - it was too hot and humid to go and see the city of Belgrade, to go to museums, pubs etc. Even to the beach. Too hot. So, we'll see how long I will stay in Suriname :P

Nevertheless, it was terribly hot the other day - what a surprise!! - but even though we went - walked!! - to the city centre.

We walked for more less half an hour, stopping every few meters so I could take a picture ;)

The Palmen Tuin - the Palm Garden, apparently a place we should avoid if we don't want to be robbed or even killed, pity, seems like a very nice place.

It wasn't a typical city centre you can imagine. People everywhere, not many side walks, rubbish on the streets and not the best smell, to use a euphemism. But it wasn't so bad, comparing to stories about India. We walked to the river bank,

...walked through a market (you really have to know what you want to buy - I couldn't recognize most of the food there!!)

...and a shopping centre,

I loved the colours

Look at the door posters :)))

It was very difficult to cross the street, we just followed the crowd, in the middle of the street, among the cars...

People are nice to you, and so are shops :D

I didn't get to the mosque yet, just took a pic from a distance, but I liked the truck with the two looking-like-towers bottles.

I've seen a few of those, it must be in fashion now :)

Some kids coming back from school

Found in a shop ;)

...we exchanged money, risked to eat out

The place where we ate, pretty decent food, no stomach ache ;)

Rice with vegetables and super hyper hot peppers, which I didn't even smell!

...and went back home by taxi.

I must say that I quite liked what I saw - the buildings, the river, the shops, even if it wasn't the most pleasant view sometimes.

There were quite a few buildings like this...

And the most important - the people. They are so nice. Smile a lot, wave to Aga, want to hold her - she didn't share their excitement - she waved and smiled, but didn't let them pick her up. Such a smart girl! The only person who gained her trust is a very nice lady who cleans at our hotel. She's 45, has 4 kids - the oldest is 25. She was VERY surprised that we only have one child. But she is very nice, she does our dishes :D And she gave Aga a baloon. :)

Well, the last days passed very quickly and quite unproductively - it rained for the last two - three days, and rain + heat = disaster! Btw, I haven't seen such a heavy rain for a while!

It rained like this for a few hours, apparently the rainy season hasn't finished yet.

A sample of the rain

Oh no, there was one productive thing - we went to check out the swimming pool I learnt about from the Internet. I didn't even expect something so nice. The pool itself is not big, but with my swimming 'skills' it's really good enough, but there is also a tennis court and other sport places, which I saw from a distance, so I am not sure what they exactly were. But we got a nice tour around the premises with the janitor ;) The tickets are 15 SRD (~3,50 Euro) so we may visit it more often :)